Our Manifestos

Managed Blogs

Managed Blogs is one strand of Collaborate Marketing. I have been talking about the service to PR & Marketing consultancies in London for a few months now. They've given me some great feedback, which I have used to tweak the offering. One issue that often comes up is control...

...and I have become increasingly intrigued by people's views on the subject. Many executives seem to think that blogs are a subversive activity that will require full disclosure about every fact within an organisation, which is pretty strange really. After all, just like any other medium the author of a blog is in total control about what they do and don't say.

The control issue seems to be driven by the accepted wisdom of authenticity being a required part of successful blogs. However, there is clearly a big difference between dropping the glossy PR language and telling the world about the company's secret research projects.

What is also strange is that many of the consultancies and companies I have been talking are happy to spend considerable PR budgets trying to reach the world through traditional media, over which they have no control.

I have spent a considerable part of my own career working in PR and I know for a fact that once you have carefully crafted your PR concepts, strategy and campaign, the media are highly likely to blow the whole thing out of the water by selecting their own angle and ignoring everything else. All good PRs know and admit this.

Some of the concern about blogs seems to be that customers will have greater access to the inner workings of an organisation. However, those same executives are often very keen to open up their doors to journalists who may be looking for a 'bad news' story. The only difference is that most companies are prepared for the arrival of journalists and have policies in place to handle any difficult issues. It's not a great leap to see how this approach could be taken with blogs.

In fact one very senior corporate blogger, Jonathan Schwarz, talks about how blog technology has given him much greater control over the way he communicates, as does GM Vice-Chairman, Bob Lutz.

I have an lots of appointments coming up to discuss the Managed Blogs service. I'll post to Modern Marketing about the control issue and other concerns as they are voiced.

Comments

Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.

The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.

The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.

The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.

It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.